Originally Posted by
manneca
As Robert Dole famously said, it depends.
25k miles should get you a domestic saver ticket worth $500. But, what are your planned uses for your miles? And there is always the risk of devaluation (or never being able to find a saver award).
Even if you value the miles at 1 cent, the miles are more valuable than the cash.
OTOH, if you are short of cash, long on miles you don't see how you'll ever use, then buying the headset with miles might be a decent proposition.
Manneca has a great point. It's all up to how much you personally value your miles. For me, I would never use my miles to purchase goods from the UA shop. I just booked a 27,000 miles trip from Los Angeles to Shanghai, by way of Europe on both the outbound and return, in First and Business class for 140,000 miles and $144 in taxes and fees. That trip easily would cost over $10,000. I'm not good at math but I'm pretty sure that's at least 37 cents per mile (10,000 divided by 27,000 = .3703).